scholarly journals New Caledonian crows plan for specific future tool use

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1938) ◽  
pp. 20201490
Author(s):  
M. Boeckle ◽  
M. Schiestl ◽  
A. Frohnwieser ◽  
R. Gruber ◽  
R. Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Convergent Evolution ◽  
Food Item ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Future Events ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Future Task ◽  
The Right

The ability to plan for future events is one of the defining features of human intelligence. Whether non-human animals can plan for specific future situations remains contentious: despite a sustained research effort over the last two decades, there is still no consensus on this question. Here, we show that New Caledonian crows can use tools to plan for specific future events. Crows learned a temporal sequence where they were (a) shown a baited apparatus, (b) 5 min later given a choice of five objects and (c) 10 min later given access to the apparatus. At test, these crows were presented with one of two tool–apparatus combinations. For each combination, the crows chose the right tool for the right future task, while ignoring previously useful tools and a low-value food item. This study establishes that planning for specific future tool use can evolve via convergent evolution, given that corvids and humans shared a common ancestor over 300 million years ago, and offers a route to mapping the planning capacities of animals.

scholarly journals Decision-making flexibility in New Caledonian crows, young children and adult humans in a multi-dimensional tool-use task

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Miller ◽  
Romana Gruber ◽  
Anna Frohnwieser ◽  
Martina Schiestl ◽  
Sarah A. Jelbert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Food Item ◽  
Work Effort ◽  
Pongo Abelii ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Multiple Variables ◽  
Corvus Moneduloides ◽  
Decision Making Tool

AbstractThe ability to make profitable decisions in natural foraging contexts may be influenced by an additional requirement of tool-use, due to increased levels of relational complexity and additional work-effort imposed by tool-use, compared with simply choosing between an immediate and delayed food item. We examined the flexibility for making the most profitable decisions in a multi-dimensional tool-use task, involving different apparatuses, tools and rewards of varying quality, in 3-5-year-old children, adult humans and tool-making New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides). We also compared our results to previous studies on habitually tool-making orangutans (Pongo abelii) and non-tool-making Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana). Adult humans, cockatoos and crows, though not children and orangutans, did not select a tool when it was not necessary, which was the more profitable choice in this situation. Adult humans, orangutans and cockatoos, though not crows and children, were able to refrain from selecting non-functional tools. By contrast, the birds, though not primates tested, struggled to attend to multiple variables - where two apparatuses, two tools and two reward qualities were presented simultaneously - without extended experience. These findings indicate: (1) in a similar manner to humans and orangutans, New Caledonian crows and Goffin’s cockatoos can flexibly make profitable decisions in some decision-making tool-use tasks, though the birds may struggle when tasks become more complex; (2) children and orangutans may have a bias to use tools in situations where adults and other tool-making species do not.

Lateralized tool use in wild New Caledonian crows

2004 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robb Rutledge ◽  
Gavin R Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
New Caledonian Crows

scholarly journals Tool use by wild New Caledonian crows Corvus moneduloides at natural foraging sites

2010 ◽  
Vol 277 (1686) ◽  
pp. 1377-1385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas A. Bluff ◽  
Jolyon Troscianko ◽  
Alex A. S. Weir ◽  
Alex Kacelnik ◽  
Christian Rutz
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Corvus Moneduloides

Economics and the Environment: A Study of Private Nuisance

1977 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. I. Ogus ◽  
G. M. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Intangible Resources ◽  
Current Research Effort ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right

The English lawyer has been notoriously unwilling to admit the relevance of social sciences to his discipline. In part, this may be attributed to his lack of formal training in economics or sociology. As regards the latter, there are some signs of the handicap being overcome: much current research effort is now being directed to the interpretation of law and the legal system as social phenomena. But the application of economic reasoning to legal instruments and institutions has been limited and tentative. Although it has long been recognised that a marriage of the two disciplines is necessary for the procreation of effective norms in areas where the law clearly governs economic activities, for example, the regulation of trade and income redistribution, so far, in this country at least, creative thinking about central legal institutions such as tort, contract, property and crime has remained relatively untouched by such a mode of analysis. Yet, as Americans have demonstrated, there is nothing inappropriate in such an exercise. At first sight the subject areas of economics and law will appear to diverge significantly: the former is “concerned with the manner in which a society produces, distributes and consumes wealth when it is constrained by scarcity, either of tangible resources or of intangible resources,” while the latter is often viewed as a system of norms governing the conduct of individuals and institutions. Yet such conduct will generally involve the transfer and acquisition of resources. With this congruence of interest, therefore, the opportunity exists to compare economic analysis with prevailing legal rules on particular issues to see whether the “right” solution is reached.

scholarly journals Reducing future fears by suppressing the brain mechanisms underlying episodic simulation

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (52) ◽  
pp. E8492-E8501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Benoit ◽  
Daniel J. Davies ◽  
Michael C. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Episodic Simulation ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Future Events ◽  
The Right ◽  
Development Of Anxiety ◽  
The Brain

Imagining future events conveys adaptive benefits, yet recurrent simulations of feared situations may help to maintain anxiety. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that people can attenuate future fears by suppressing anticipatory simulations of dreaded events. Participants repeatedly imagined upsetting episodes that they feared might happen to them and suppressed imaginings of other such events. Suppressing imagination engaged the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which modulated activation in the hippocampus and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Consistent with the role of the vmPFC in providing access to details that are typical for an event, stronger inhibition of this region was associated with greater forgetting of such details. Suppression further hindered participants’ ability to later freely envision suppressed episodes. Critically, it also reduced feelings of apprehensiveness about the feared scenario, and individuals who were particularly successful at down-regulating fears were also less trait-anxious. Attenuating apprehensiveness by suppressing simulations of feared events may thus be an effective coping strategy, suggesting that a deficiency in this mechanism could contribute to the development of anxiety.

Biomineralization Processes

1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz A. Lowenstam ◽  
Stephen Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Spectrum ◽  
Convergent Evolution ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
External Medium ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mineral Formation ◽  
Mineralization Processes ◽  
Established Fact ◽  
Different Sources ◽  
Almost Continuous

The large number of different minerals formed by organisms from almost 50 different phyla described in Chapter 2 should in itself discourage anyone from searching for the mechanism of biomineralization. On the other hand, the survey of macromolecules used by many organisms to control mineralization (Chapter 2), even though limited primarily to carbonate- and phosphate-bearing mineralized hard parts, shows that similar and rather unusual acidic glycoproteins and proteoglycans are widely utilized in biomineralization. This raises the possibility that many organisms may have adopted common approaches or strategies for regulating mineral formation. We do not know whether this arose as a result of divergence from a common ancestor or is a product of convergent evolution in which many different phyla independently began utilizing similar macromolecules for controlling mineralization (see Chapter 12). Either way we view the diversity in biomineralization as the product of a very broad and almost continuous spectrum of processes that organisms use to control mineralization. This ranges from no apparent control at one end to, it seems, control over every detail at the other. However, this is achieved by a fairly limited number of different basic processes used in various combinations and ways to produce a unique final product. This last statement is, we readily admit at this point in time, more an act of faith than an established fact. In this chapter we will try to identify and/or speculate about some of these basic processes. We will draw upon material from many different sources, and, in particular, we will refer whenever possible to the more detailed descriptions of mineralization processes given in the chapters that follow. As a consequence, this chapter may also be used by the reader as a guide toward more discriminating reading on selected topics in the remainder of the book. The spectrum of biomineralization processes can in principle be easily divided into cases in which control is exercised in some way over mineralization and those in which it is not. In practice the differentiation is not that simple as all organisms do exercise some control at one level or another, even if it simply involves, for example, removing from the cell some undesirable metabolic end-product or ion that combines with another ion in the external medium and precipitates.

scholarly journals Fossil hominin shoulders support an African ape-like last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (38) ◽  
pp. 11829-11834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan M. Young ◽  
Terence D. Capellini ◽  
Neil T. Roach ◽  
Zeresenay Alemseged
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Last Common Ancestor ◽  
Ancestral State ◽  
Evolutionary Trajectories ◽  
Parsimonious Model ◽  
And Function ◽  
Fossil Hominin

Reconstructing the behavioral shifts that drove hominin evolution requires knowledge of the timing, magnitude, and direction of anatomical changes over the past ∼6–7 million years. These reconstructions depend on assumptions regarding the morphotype of the Homo–Pan last common ancestor (LCA). However, there is little consensus for the LCA, with proposed models ranging from African ape to orangutan or generalized Miocene ape-like. The ancestral state of the shoulder is of particular interest because it is functionally associated with important behavioral shifts in hominins, such as reduced arboreality, high-speed throwing, and tool use. However, previous morphometric analyses of both living and fossil taxa have yielded contradictory results. Here, we generated a 3D morphospace of ape and human scapular shape to plot evolutionary trajectories, predict ancestral morphologies, and directly test alternative evolutionary hypotheses using the hominin fossil evidence. We show that the most parsimonious model for the evolution of hominin shoulder shape starts with an African ape-like ancestral state. We propose that the shoulder evolved gradually along a single morphocline, achieving modern human-like configuration and function within the genus Homo. These data are consistent with a slow, progressive loss of arboreality and increased tool use throughout human evolution.

Far Space Remapping by Tool Use: A rTMS Study Over the Right Posterior Parietal Cortex

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 795-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Giglia ◽  
Lorenzo Pia ◽  
Alessia Folegatti ◽  
Angela Puma ◽  
Brigida Fierro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Posterior Parietal ◽  
The Right

scholarly journals Algorithmic memory and the right to be forgotten on the web

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395171770399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Esposito
Keyword(s):  
Digital Processing ◽  
Human Information Processing ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Digital Memory ◽  
Right To Be Forgotten ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Web

The debate on the right to be forgotten on Google involves the relationship between human information processing and digital processing by algorithms. The specificity of digital memory is not so much its often discussed inability to forget. What distinguishes digital memory is, instead, its ability to process information without understanding. Algorithms only work with data (i.e. with differences) without remembering or forgetting. Merely calculating, algorithms manage to produce significant results not because they operate in an intelligent way, but because they “parasitically” exploit the intelligence, the memory, and the attribution of meaning by human actors. The specificity of algorithmic processing makes it possible to bypass the paradox of remembering to forget, which up to now blocked any human-based forgetting technique. If you decide to forget some memory, the most immediate effect is drawing attention to it, thereby activating remembering. Working differently from human intelligence, however, algorithms can implement, for the first time, the classical insight that it might be possible to reinforce forgetting not by erasing memories but by multiplying them. After discussing several projects on the web which implicitly adopt this approach, the article concludes by raising some deeper problems posed when algorithms use data and metadata to produce information that cannot be attributed to any human being.

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